In A LookingGlass Darkly
by mutantsrocktheworld
Summary: Part an origin story for the Mad Hatter - one with a fantastical twist that has influences that reach even into present day - and part, well, almost everything else... better summary inside. Give it a whirl! Rated T mainly for creepy or icky stuff so far.


**Okay, here's something very different for those who like crossovers. This isn't posted in the crossover section because I don't think many people go there; basically, I want feedback on this. The very, very beginning is a bit of a parody, but it changes dramatically, and keep in mind I've never really played the game. Just read fan fiction and seen some videos. The idea that Jervis had been in an asylum when he was younger is all mine. *rubs hands and giggles maniacally.* Enjoy if you can…**

**(FYI, I don't own anything that you recognize.)**

In a Looking-Glass Darkly

Again the dream. Again and again and again the dream… the memory…

_He had been asleep without dreaming for once when the White Rabbit's voice rang in his head, desperate and urgent. "Fire! Fire! Wake up, Jervis!"_

_He bolted upright in his bed, opening his eyes to only another nightmare. Smoke blanketed everything, stinging his eyes, and he could hear the dry, hungry chuckle of flames somewhere close - and farther, but clearer - _

_He was out of bed in an instant, running headlong through the curtains of smoke and sparks towards his parents' room. "Mum! Dad!"_

_He could hear them clearer now - the door must be stuck, his father was pounding on it. "Dad!"_

"_Jervis!" The muffled voice was desperate. "Get out of the house, now!"_

"_But - no! I can't leave without you and Mum -" Jervis reached for the doorknob, his eyes watering from the smoke, but another shout stopped him. _

"_Jervis! There's nothing you can do, get -" It ended in a strangled shout and a scream from his mother, coupled with a roaring crash._

_Desperately, Jervis grabbed the doorknob; it burned his hands, but he ignored the pain. With strength made almost superhuman by desperation, he yanked the door open. _

_What he saw is not for me to tell. And it was never meant for anyone to see, especially an eight-year-old with a photographic memory. Bruce Wayne never knew that he was lucky; at least his parents died quickly, near-painlessly._

_Two minutes later, without any memory of how he got there, he found himself lying on the ground outside, staring up at the sky. One hand fell to his side, and he felt something soft under it; dreamily, he lifted up the stuffed white rabbit with black button eyes that his mother had bought because Jervis had been reminded of Lewis Carroll's character. Holding it to his chest, Jervis let blessed nothing claim his mind as he let the rain now starting to fall softly do his crying for him._

_After a while there were people who shouted at him, meaninglessly; they managed to get him up on his feet and away from the still-burning house. Someone tried to take the White Rabbit, but Jervis simply held on with a grip like the clasp of death. It was all that was left. Everything else was ashes…_

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Rutledge Asylum had many cases, but in all his years Dr. Rutledge had scarcely ever seen one so tragic, or so impenetrable, as 1242. Jervis Tetch. The boy was only fifteen; he had been in the asylum since ten. After the horrible death of his parents in a fire, he had stopped speaking, clung for dear life to a white stuffed rabbit - now dirty grey - that he had saved from the fire, and begun drawing the strangest pictures…

One of these had just been deposited on the doctor's desk by an extremely worried nurse. It depicted a scene that bore a vague resemblance to one from a book by Lewis Carroll; a hatter, a hare, and a dormouse seated at a table. However…

The Hatter was green-skinned, his face lined like crumpled parchment. A huge clockwork gear arched out of his back, hunching him over and making his arms appear unnaturally long; his white- gloved hands were folded around a clear vial holding some silver substance.

_Mercury, probably. _Dr. Rutledge moved on.

The Hare's appearance was even more gruesome. Its eyes were dull and glassy, its ears drooping; below its nose were mechanical mandibles. Only a short space of neck later the pale fur of its underbelly was upheaved and wet with brown and red blood, occasionally punctured by what looked rather like clock springs and rivets. Around the abdomen it transformed to purely metal and machinery, then the listlessly dangling arms and legs were the originals, but scarred and misshapen.

The Dormouse's front half was slumped on the table, but from what the doctor could see of it, most of its chest and lower half was replaced with strange machinery, badly grafted to its injured body.

With a slight shudder Doctor Rutledge laid the paper down. He had seen many disturbing things in the asylum, but Jervis' pictures always gave even him a bit of a chill. Especially was that the boy gave the impression of being true to life, working obsessively over the pictures with pencil and colored pencil until he judged they were close enough to what he seemed to remember.

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"Was this a dream you had, Jervis?"

The boy did not look up from the white rabbit. Dr. Rutledge had not really expected him to. He laid the picture down on the table and sat down on the chair that had been brought in.

"You have a lot of bad dreams, don't you?"

Five full minutes he waited patiently, and was finally rewarded by a small movement of the boy's head. When Jervis was in a more responsive mood, he would sometimes nod or shake his head for yes/no questions.

The doctor held out the picture toward him again; after a minute the boy took it, looking at it without expression. The doctor repeated.

"Was this a dream?"

Jervis cocked his head to the side, staring down at the drawing. The doctor sighed and stood up, deciding that he wasn't going to get more out of the boy yet. "Well, goodbye, Jervis. I should see you next week."

If he had lingered a minute longer, he might have been there when Jervis Tetch did something he had not done in seven years. Rising from his bed, the boy continued to stare at what he had drawn, but now with his brow wrinkled in puzzlement, as if he were trying to recall where he had seen what he depicted. After a while, his lips parted, and a soft, hoarse, little-used voice was forced shakily into the air.

"_Who dreamed it?"_

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The Queen of Hearts lolled on her throne, tentacles twined around the nearby pillars. Although her pose was relaxed, her mind was busy, searching through the information sent to her by her spies in other worlds. The mind of Wonderland's current host was failing quickly, hollowed out by the demands placed upon it by the dream-land, and they needed a new human mind to base out of, one with imagination, emotion, and weaknesses she could exploit.

As part of her huge, computer-like mind analyzed profiles of children - the earlier Wonderland implanted itself, the better - another part drifted back over Wonderland's history.

The first of Wonderland's type, no-one knew exactly when it had been made. Named Jumanji, the portal to the small, 13th plane-based, jungle world was a board game, supposed to come to whoever needed it. At first, the game and its little world worked smoothly, seeking out people who a stint in the jungle, fighting off a lion, or running from a headhunter would do some good to… but after a long while, a leader emerged in Jumanji that dared to rebel against The Rules. His name was Van Pelt; he was a headhunter, and quickly had Jumanji under his command.

The game's purpose now was simply to get as much out into the larger world, and stay out as much as possible; if this required doing their best to kill the unlucky players, they did it. Somehow, the game was never recalled by whoever made it, but it was beaten by four players in 1995 and thrown in a river with bricks tied to it.

It was only a short while after that another game emerged. Zathura, it was called, and it encompassed a whole other universe - housed in the 30th plane (dimension) - in its vintage '60's style body. It was made with more care, and did not corrupt as Jumanji had; other than one of the alien races, the Zorgons, getting a little out of control, it worked like a charm.

Then came the advent of video and computer games, and Wonderland - or American McGee's Alice, as it was originally called. Based in the 42nd dimension, Wonderland was a risky venture, as it was _created _corrupt; the players were supposed to heal it and get things back in order. Also, there was a more rigid cast of characters than the others; each game of Jumanji or Zathura played would be different, but in Wonderland there were certain obstacles that had to be in certain places at certain times. What the makers had apparently not anticipated was the Queen of Hearts.

The Queen laughed, curving her serpentine body in pleasure as she remembered her quick rise to power - and what followed! She licked her lips. Each of her new subjects had been commanded to defeat, but not kill, the players and bring them to her… their living essence, drained from their dying bodies, had given her enough strength to separate Wonderland from the game. She was, however, not yet strong enough to keep the fragile land of imagination and madness together by herself, and so for now they were forced to room in a host mind.

She considered her subjects, and a small frown curved her heart-shaped mouth. Sometimes it was very annoying that she had to have a full cast, and couldn't kill them…

There was the Duchess - the rotting old cannibal. And too arrogant for her own good. The Cheshire Cat… she was not sure if the Cat even counted as one of her subjects. He never listened to a single command, advised the players, and had a disturbing habit of popping up where you least wanted him. He was the reason for the one player - Alice - the one that had first come to Wonderland after the Queen took over, and ESCAPED! The Queen's coils twitched in anger at the very thought.

Then the inhabitants of the Asylum, the huge, rotting underground complex. Technically, the Mad Hatter answered to her, and he grudgingly provided her with his clockwork Automatons for her army, but he mainly ruled the Asylum. Under him were the Tweedle twins; stupid, loutish creatures good mainly for heavy lifting; once there had been the March Hare and the Dormouse, before the Hatter experimented on them; there were rumors he had captured a Gryphon, the last, and of course there were large numbers of insane children bought from the Skool.

Then the Jabberwock, her faithful general, another reason she was forced to keep the Hatter around. He was partially mechanical, and the old inventor was the only one with the know-how to mend him and keep him in fighting order.

The Mock-Turtle - it was plain to all that he didn't like the Queen, as he sat around on the bank of the river all day and cried about her ruling. However, he was not a threat, and the Queen considered him beneath her attention. Then there were her faithful legions of card guards, and the Boojums, and the many other nameless - to her concern - creatures that filled Wonderland.

She slowed, then stopped and flicked back, commanding a spy to show the child it had found again. Fifteen years old… a little late for Wonderland to take root, but possible in this case; the boy was in an asylum. Those with fragile minds were always the easiest conquests. Jervis Tetch, his name was… the glimpse the spy had caught of him showed him sitting on a cot, holding - _what was that? _The Queen looked closer, her pale, milky eyes narrowing. A stuffed white rabbit… interesting. She slipped her mind into the asylum computer and viewed his files. Parents died when he was eight in a fire in their home… it was thought he might have seen their bodies, but, whatever reason, he had been in a strange catatonic state, lying on the ground and looking up at the sky with a death grip on the stuffed rabbit. Some relatives had tried to take him in, as they thought it was their duty, but had sent him to an asylum after two years of blank stares, no speech and - here the Queen murmured "Hmm." - a strange obsession with _Alice in Wonderland._ Not even the proper book, but a strange, twisted version where there were creatures covered in blood and partially clockwork, or so ill-made and misshapen they caused the very soul to recoil in terror, unable to summon up any pity for the creatures' deformity.

"Hmm," the Queen said again. "Unusual." A thin tentacle reached out and flicked the bell that summoned her steward. Seconds later the Knave of Hearts shuffled into the room, leering in a failed attempt to look pleasant. "Yesh, Your Majeshty?"

The Knave always annoyed her as well, but he was her link to the land outside the Palace she could not venture from. "Knave, go to the Mad Hatter. Ask him if it is possible still for dreamers to find their way here and out without being captured."

The Knave blanched. "But Majeshty, the Hatter, he'sh - he'sh - well, mad!"

"Yes, but he is the one with the knowledge of technicalities and possibilities that even I am not aware of. Take some mercury from the vault to pay him with and try to make it out with all of your body parts intact."

The Queen chuckled as she watched the Knave shuffle off, his face a mask of terror, then another thought struck her and she recalled him. "Knave. Take him this as well." Snatching a pen up in one tentacle and a inkpot in the other, she wrote her message quickly in the air with the ink pouring out the tip of the pen. At a whispered command the airborne writing curled into the bottle and she corked it, tossing it to the Knave. "Now run along."

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The Knave walked back and forth in front of the looming doors of the Asylum, trying to get up the courage to knock. Although the Mad Hatter had not been seen much for the last century, everybody still remembered what had happened to the Hare and the Dormouse, and, although the numbers ranged from five to twenty, everybody agreed that SOME card guards had vanished while posted near the Asylum.

Finally gathering himself by thinking of what the Queen would do to him if he did not get an answer out of the Hatter, he raised his trembling hand, only to have the doors swing open and to find himself face-to-face with the Tweedle twins.

They were crude, ugly creatures with enormous potbellies and greasy gray flesh; they looked as if a designer for a horror movie with little budget and less time had slapped them together out of slimy clay and whatever else he could find lying around. Their mouths were leering slashes in their doughy faces, filled with irregular, crooked yellow teeth.

"Weeehl, weeehl," said one, its breath whistling through its teeth. "A Queeehn's man. An' what doeh the Queeehn want, may Ah ask?"

The Knave drew himself up with a great effort. "I carry a meshage from the Queen to the Mad Hatter. Where ish he?"

The other one - now the Knave spotted a DEE branding mark on one of the rolls of flesh on its fat neck - snorted, and beckoned the Knave forward into the darkness. Clutching the vial of mercury in his pocket nervously, the Knave stepped forward and was hit over the back of the head.

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"This is outrageoush!" The Knave waved his arms as he hung upside-down from a rope in the ceiling of the Mad Hatter's laboratory, succeeding only in setting himself swinging gently. "I'm a Queen's meshenger, I should get some reshpe-"

He stopped in his haranguing of the twins with a frightened gulp as the door swung open and he saw the Mad Hatter.

Nobody knew exactly _what _the Mad Hatter was - some said goblin, because of his green skin, some devil and some - a very few - dared to whisper that he had once been human, now one twisted by centuries of hate and insanity.

He was hunchbacked from the gear that arched out of his back, providing a constant _tick…tick…tick… _to the background. His skin looked like crumpled green parchment stretched loosely over his brittle bones, his upper lip pulled back slightly over his yellowed overbite. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, black, blank and depthless, and he carried a cane, _tap…tap…tap… _counterpointing the _tick…tick…tick… _in a maddening, eerie fashion.

"And what have we here?" He brushed aside the twins as if they were dry leaves in his path and stood a few feet away from the gently swinging Knave, leaning on his cane. "My, my, the Knave of Hearts. I am _honored."_ Strange mockery lingered behind every word. The Hatter turned towards the brutish creatures that had made way for him. "Dum, Dee, you neglected to inform me of the arrival of… our _distinguished visitor."_ Again the mockery. His voice was soft and light, breathy but with a touch of steel hardness lacing the mercury madness.

Dee, who seemed to be a smidgen smarter than Dum, stumbled back a pace. "We - we were just about to inform you, Master -"

"Ah. And what of my orders - that you were to inform me _before _you opened the door to anyone?" The voice was still gentle, scarcely above a whisper, but the twins were shaking, their layers of fat quivering, as the Hatter stepped forward.

"We - we w-won't do it again, please Master - " stammered Dee through his blubbery lips, making ineffectual gestures as if to shield himself from the figure a little more than half his size and a fraction of his weight.

"What matters," the Hatter said coldly, reaching deep into his pocket "is that it happened _this time. _I believe a _small _punishment is required to assure that you are not tempted to transgress again."

A small silver pill arched lightly from his hand and exploded into a cloud of silvery-blue gas on the floor between the twins. The Knave watched in horror as they began screaming and writhing, clawing at themselves in the horror of something only they could see. The Hatter turned back towards the Knave, the corners of his mouth curving upwards slightly.

"Mercury," he said quietly. "Madness in a bottle. Of course, it usually does not have any effect on those who are already mad, but I have found ways to… improve on it, shall we say? What is _Her Majesty's _message?"

"Er… would you let me down first?"

"Ah yes, of course." A white-gloved hand snaked forward and pulled a lever, and the Knave was sent crashing on the floor, barely saving the vial of mercury and the Inque bottle. "Now what is it?"

"The Queens wishesh to know," said the Knave with as much regal pomp as he could muster before the faintly amused black eyes fixed on him "if it ish shtill poshible for Dreamersh to find their waysh in and out without being caught."

"I see." The Hatter rocked back slightly on his heels. "I rate the _Queen's _intelligence at least high enough that she gave you something to pay me with?"

The Knave held out the vial. "The puresht mercury."

"One can never have too much, I suppose…" The tiny glass container was gone in a flash into a pocket of the Hatter's dark green coat. "The answer is yes. I actually spotted one myself, just a few days ago. A boy in his teens - he appeared right in my private laboratory, then vanished."

Thinking that he wouldn't be surprised if the boy was scarred for life, considering the rumors of what was in the Hatter's laboratory, the Knave held out the Inque bottle. "Thish too."

The Hatter took it in another flicker of movement and uncorked it. The Inque - royal red - poured out and curled back into writing in the air. The Hatter's eyes skimmed along it and he laughed a hoarse, dry laugh. "Tell her I need to do more research to answer this, but it would be a great relief to me as well if it was possible." The writing fell to the floor and the Hatter stowed the bottle in his pocket. "Now go. It's almost six o' clock and there's a few old friends expecting me in my private laboratory…"

The Knave ran for the door faster than the White Rabbit.

Shortly afterward the _tap… tap _and slow clicking echoed down the stairway to the lowest part of the Asylum, then to a triple-locked door. Thin, spidery hands undid the complex workings, then the heavy steel door swung open.

The Mad Hatter's mouth curved into an unpleasant, insane smile as he entered the room, then he stopped and doubled over as the gear in his back clanked, almost halting for a minute. Panting for breath, he cursed Wonderland's decay, then straightened up with effort and, pulling the bottle of mercury out, headed for the table at the other end of the room, pausing to look with the strange smile at the two figures at the table. The March Hare's head twitched slightly, glassy eyes half-closing, and he laughed.

"Still hanging on, March? You always were a determined one… I remember how long it took to make you scream…"

A scarred arm juddered slightly, but the Hatter knew that without more energy than the Hare had the creature was helpless. He began to turn away -

And his gear jammed again, jerking his upper body forward and sending the vial of mercury flying out of his hand to smash on the surface of the table. The silver liquid flowed towards the two inert creatures as if magnetized. The other's eyes widened. Mercury to the mad was rather like lightning to normal humans; it gave them a huge jolt of energy, supercharging every cell.

The silver touched the paws of the Hare, and two syllables broke from the Hatter's lips.

"Oh shit."

The Hare's head raised jerkily, his eyelids raising. Slowly, the metal mandibles opened and shut with a sharp clicking noise as the horrifying visage swung towards the Hatter.

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Jervis had kept himself from sleeping longer than usual, afraid of another of his Wonderland dreams, but his eyelids finally closed to plunge him in the middle of one.

_He screamed when his eyes cleared and he saw the scene before him. The Hare swung up with a grinding of gears from the corpse it had been bent over, and its strange flat eyes fastened on him. _

"_Eeeyyyyaaaahhh!" it screeched, then began to drag its heavy metal lower part towards him. "No, you're dead!" The voice was high and insane, raspy and half-mechanical. "I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOU! Stay dead!"_

Jervis jerked awake by scratching his arm deep enough to draw blood. Clutching his smarting arm, he thought about what he had just seen; obviously the dead person was the Hatter, and the - the Hare had somehow come alive, if you could call its half-existence alive, but had it mistaken him for the _Hatter?_

"Oh, my goodness!" He recognized the shocked sweet voice of one of the nurses, Miss Little, and her gentle touch as she pulled his arm out to look at it. "We'll have to get a bandage on this… why do you do this to yourself?"

_If you only knew. If ANYONE only knew._

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"So, you asked the Hatter whether you can replace any of the 'cast?" inquired the Ace of Hearts, lolling back on her couch and looking at her mother under lazy eyelids. "Interesting. I wonder if it's possible."

The Queen's brain suddenly shocked with an urgent message from one of her surveillance spheres, and her eyes narrowed. "I hope so," she said quietly. "My spy reports that the Hatter has just been killed."

The Ace's eyes flew open and her tentacles twitched in alarm. "How - how?"

"The Hare. Somehow it got doused with mercury - the Dormouse too."

"They really were still down there…"

"Not a pretty sight." As accustomed to gruesome spectacles as she was, the Queen felt a twinge of disgust at the pictures conveyed to her by the sphere. "Hm… If it is possible, we'll have to replace the Hare and Dormouse too. In fact…" The Queen's eyes widened as an idea came to her. "It might take some looking, but don't you agree that the Knave has been getting rather annoying? And I don't believe anyone would mourn if we got a new Duchess…"

Her daughter smiled slyly. "And you shall need an overseer for the job, will you not Mother?"

Knowing full well that her daughter could make the recruited loyal to only her if given a chance, the Queen smiled sweetly back at her. "Indeed, my favorite daughter. I shall be watching you _closely _to make sure it is done well, however."

The Ace dipped her head. "Indeed, Mother. I shall enlist scouts and send them out into the Waking World as swiftly as possible."

The Queen watched her slide out the door, and the smile on her lipless mouth grew a little more wicked. _My favorite daughter indeed… I saved you for last, didn't I? You should taste well enough when the time comes… _She lapped another two folds of her great length from around her 'throne' and raised into the air, her milky eyes shining pitilessly. _There shall be no successors. I am the Queen._

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**It'll probably be a while before I update. Meanwhile, questions are welcome and reviews are welcomer!**


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